Scars
by katydidit
Summary: John's scars symbolize death, the bullet and the infection which almost killed him thousands of miles from his home. They should not hold such fascination for Sherlock. It's...strange.


"Don't..."

Cool fingertips and heated lips traced a line down his neck, along his shoulder, to the scar that puckered his skin, marked him. The scar itself didn't hurt anymore, though sometimes the bone and muscle underneath ached in the rain and the cold. First the bullet and then infection had torn through him, leaving angry red scar tissue to appear and contrast sharply against the rest of his skin. He hated looking at it, tried to keep it hidden either under his clothing or the cover of darkness whenever possible.

The other man's tongue flitted out from between his lips to trace the deformed edges of the wound that had nearly killed him. John would never understand his friend's—lover's—obsession with the thing, but then there was a lot about him that he didn't understand. "Sherlock, stop..."

Sherlock paused, then mouthed his way back up John's shoulder to nip at his earlobe. When he spoke, his voice was low and honeyed, breath hot against his skin. "What's wrong?"

"You know what's wrong." John wanted to pull away, to cover himself from those eyes that saw everything, but he couldn't move. An almost imperceptible nod, and Sherlock moved his mouth to the other shoulder, the unmarked shoulder. John's eyes closed and he exhaled with pleasure, but cut it off abruptly as he felt lithe fingers now tracing his former wound. He pushed the other man away and stooped to pick up his jumper. "I said stop." His voice was sharper than he'd intended.

"I cannot understand why you're so sensitive about it," Sherlock said, and John knew that he had the best of intentions. The words stung anyway.

"You don't have to understand it," John managed after struggling to pull his jumper down over his head. It got stuck on his head for one long, undignified moment, but he overcame it eventually, and he smoothed his hair. "All you have to know is that I am, and I don't like it when you're touching it and...and...licking it, and kissing it." The words sounded strange when he said them aloud, and he could feel himself blushing. "So just don't."

With that, he left the room. Tea. He needed tea. Good old comforting, calming tea. His hands shook a bit as he prepared the kettle and the mugs. Personally, he didn't understand Sherlock's obsession with scar tissue. Certainly he'd seen plenty of it on the bits of bodies he nicked from the morgue. It didn't make sense to try to chart the way nerves in the tissue reacted, because that was so variable from body to body. It could have been simply a matter of texture, one of those things that Sherlock would latch onto until some new obsession drew his attention. John prepared the separate mugs and sipped from his own. The familiar brew calmed him a bit, and he sighed.

It wasn't some romantic thing, his scar. A fire-hot bullet had torn through flesh and sinew and shattered his bone. He'd been bleeding out, separated from the rest of his men by a sandstorm. He had vague memories of another soldier pushing through the swirling dust and covering their heads with some sort of cloth to wait it out, but by the time they were able to move, he'd lost too much blood and couldn't remember much of anything. He woke up several days later to the smell of rotting flesh on the dry desert wind and realized with dawning horror that it was coming from his wound. The infection posed at least as much of a threat as the bullet itself did, and he was told that he spent three days in feverish hallucinations and night terrors.

He downplayed it all to Harry, of course, but there were moments there in the army hospital when he wasn't sure he was coming home. Though the initial danger had passed, John could not imagine slipping back into civilian life. There was no way he would be declared fit for duty, not with his shoulder joint in such condition, and at his age, it wasn't likely that he would either recover quickly enough or remain in good enough physical condition after recovering to be re-admitted. He'd had a lot of time there in the cot to consider what it would be like to rent a flat again, to go to shops and drink tea and eat biscuits and be a civilian, not a soldier, and his mind would simply go black. He couldn't do it.

A lanky figure appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, and John lifted the second mug off of the counter. It was accepted with an appreciative hum, and Sherlock leaned on the counter next to him.

"Your scar makes you think of death," he pronounced, staring into the mug. His tone made it clear that John was not expected to reply. There wasn't much to say, anyway. " You care about your appearance when we're not in the flat, but you're comfortable enough in here and with me that it isn't a matter of vanity. Like most people, you don't like mixing sex and death. That's why it makes you uncomfortable when I touch it."

Astute observation so far. John nodded. Sherlock observed him from the corner of his eye and went on.

"But, in the interest of that _communication_ thing that Mrs. Hudson is always nattering on about, may I tell you what your scar makes me think of?" He didn't wait very long for John to acquiesce, probably because he was so very used to getting his way. _I spoil him_, John thought with a wry grin. Sherlock put his mug down again and placed his hands on either side of John's old wound. They had been heated by the tea, and the warmth just barely managed to trickle through John's jumper. It was nice. "Life. You were injured quite severely—I can tell from the tissue and from the nightmares you still have—but your body was strong and it kept you alive." His voice was soft, but not in the measured or theatrical way that Sherlock could use when he wanted to get information. This felt genuine. Maybe that was the point. John swallowed hard. "If you had died in Afghanistan, we would never have met, and of course I would not have known the difference, but since you didn't, and we did, I...do."

It was a rare occasion that Sherlock fell to such lapses in eloquence. John was reminded of the time in Irene's sitting room. This was different, and not simply because there was no mostly-naked dominatrix sitting wrapped in Sherlock's coat. This was also one of the longest speeches that John had ever heard Sherlock make while sounding so...vulnerable. It should not have made him so uncomfortable to see his lover laid out so bare, not when he had already seen (and placed) him into so many other positions that were so much more physically vulnerable. A smile quirked at his lips at the memories.

"So you think death when you think of your scar. Fine. It's all fine. But what I feel when I touch it is life. Your injury got you invalided home. It kept you from getting blown up in some bombing overseas. It kept you from dying before we met. For all I know, you've kept me from relapsing and dying of an overdose. This scar led us to what we have, and I like it." Sherlock cleared his throat, beginning to distance himself again. "But, ehm...I will do my best to control my impulses. I don't want to make you so uncomfortable."

John laughed, a wry sound but nonetheless, not without humour. "Since when?" he demanded, and caught Sherlock's gaze. He was tempted to also ask what happened to Sherlock's fierce distaste for sentiment, but the idea seemed abhorrent. He wanted to encourage moments like these, after all, not discourage them. John set his mug down next to Sherlock's and tugged his jumper off. The air in the kitchen was chilled but not unpleasant. To his credit, Sherlock did not move to place his fingers or lips or tongue against that spot on John's shoulder. Instead, he held his gaze, face questioning, expectant.

"You're right," John agreed with a nod. "About everything."

He stepped closer to the taller man, and Sherlock's lips curled into a smug smile. _Bastard_. "Obviously," he replied, before stooping to crush John's mouth with his own. They fumbled their way back to Sherlock's bedroom, tea forgotten and left to go bitter and cold while they burned with their own fire. When Sherlock came, he moaned John's name against the beautiful, damaged skin of his shoulder, and the feeling sent John tumbling over the edge with him.


End file.
